After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

Before the words were finished, the blue bricks on both sides of the wall contracted inward, revealing two rows of dark launch ports.

A dozen or so bronze crossbow bolts, coated with highly poisonous black blood, shot out in a crisscross pattern with a sharp whistling sound as they tore through the air.

Ah Ning has been working in this industry for many years and is very agile.

She used her ankles to push off, leaning her upper body backward and executing a perfect iron bridge in mid-air.

The crossbow bolt grazed her nose.

At the same time, she raised her right hand and inserted the folding shovel into the gear slot in the crack in the wall.

A metallic scraping sound rang out, and the mechanism's subsequent rapid-fire was forcibly stopped.

The Red Widow, however, did not possess such abilities.

She was so frightened that her feet were rooted to the spot, and she was about to be shot into a pincushion.

Xiao Rou, who was in the middle of the group, twitched her fingers slightly, and the Zi Gu inside the Red Widow's body burst out with a strong contraction force, forcibly pulling her torso to the side by half an inch.

puff!

A crossbow bolt grazed the Red Widow's shoulder, leaving a trail of blood.

The skin and flesh are turned outwards, and the bone is visible deep inside.

She collapsed to the ground in pain, clutching her shoulder and wailing.

But no one went up to help her.

Her fate was sealed the moment she drugged Zhou Ran.

Kind-hearted Ah Ning helped her with a simple bandage.

After crossing this deadly area of ​​traps, the view ahead suddenly opened up.

A natural stone platform, about half the size of a basketball court, appeared before everyone's eyes.

The stone platform is surrounded by jagged rocks, with a gentle slope, temporarily free from the traps created by human intervention.

Zhou Ran waved to signal the team to stop advancing and rest on the spot.

He took out several bottles of modern mineral water from his storage ring and tossed them to Fatty Wang, Miao Yingying, and the others.

Aning also got a bottle.

She leaned against a protruding rock, unscrewed the bottle cap, and gulped down water, her chest heaving.

Zhou Ran took out a pack of cigarettes, pulled one out, and put it in his mouth.

A wisp of Asura Demonic Flame flicked from his fingertip and lit the cigarette.

I took a deep breath, and the grayish-white smoke swirled in the dim light.

He turned his gaze to A Ning, his tone cold:

"You're a rat who digs up dead people's graves all day long."

How did you learn about such a high-level thing as a "dimensional portal"?

Aning froze as she drank water.

She put the water bottle down, her eyes darting away.

She turned her head and glanced at Fatty Wang, who was wiping the Luoyang shovel, and then at Miao Yingying, who was fiddling with the bone whistle.

He even glanced warily at the Red Widow, who was lying nearby licking her wounds like a dog.

She didn't want to talk about this topic anymore.

Zhou Ran exhaled another smoke ring, the smoke blurring his sharp features:

There's no need to shy away from it.

Those still breathing down here are all my men, Zhou Ran's men.

explain."

Ah Ning gritted her teeth. Since her life was in someone else's hands, she might as well drop a bombshell.

"I heard it from my employer."

Thousands of years ago, the area beneath Mangshan was not a tomb, but a place of terrible catastrophe.

Back then, countless strange and terrifying things that did not belong to the underworld, nor to the blue planet, emerged from this place.

Those monsters fed on everything in the world, and nearly devoured this entire land.

Ah Ning swallowed hard, her voice trembling:

"Later, a powerful cultivator with extraordinary abilities appeared."

He single-handedly stormed through the monster's lair and forcibly left behind a bone with extremely high energy as a seal.

That 'door' was forever suppressed seven hundred meters underground.

Upon hearing this, Fatty Wang dropped the rag he was using to wipe the Luoyang shovel on the ground.

His eyes widened:

"Dimensional portal?"

Are there aliens hiding down there?

Miao Yingying frowned:

"The theory of planes"

There are only a few words about it in ancient books from southern Xinjiang.

Legend has it that the ancient gods dwell in the heavens beyond the heavens. Could the monster your employer speaks of be the legendary extraterrestrial demon?

Ah Ning shook her head: "I don't know anything, as long as I can bring back that bone that serves as the core of the formation."

Zhou Ran did not express his opinion upon hearing this.

Just then, the Yin-Gathering Banner in his arms suddenly trembled without warning.

A chilling aura spread along the banners.

A clear, cold, and arrogant female voice exploded directly in Zhou Ran's mind.

"This woman is right."

The temperature around the stone platform dropped sharply.

A thin layer of white frost condensed in the crevices of the rock wall, and the breath exhaled turned into pale white mist.

Zhou Ran stood still, his face expressionless.

His consciousness had sunk deep into the sea of ​​consciousness.

Within the space of the Gathering Yin Banner.

Li Zhiyao received the "Nine-Turn Rejuvenation Needle" from Master Xuyun of Longhu Mountain and was nourished by the Qi of the True Dragon.

The soul was fully awakened.

Her previously ethereal figure became much more solid.

"You woke up at just the right time."

Zhou Ran transmitted his voice in his sea of ​​consciousness.

"How much of what that woman said was true?"

Li Zhiyao conjured up a red dress.

She didn't answer immediately, but looked around at the deep darkness and remained silent for a long time.

"It's true."

Her voice was very soft, as if it were drifting from a very far place.

"My brother was here back then..."

No, it's at the boundary membrane where these different planes meet.

Her ghostly figure lowered her eyes, her slender fingers unconsciously clenching the hem of her cheongsam.

"He narrowly escaped death in that massacre and plundered an immense fortune."

"Thanks to that stroke of luck, he broke through in one fell swoop..."

She paused for a moment.

"Nascent Soul Stage"

Transformation stage.

These three words weighed heavily on Zhou Ran's mind.

Could this place truly hold the opportunity to transform into a deity?!

Looking at the Blue Star, where spiritual energy is depleted, even a proper Golden Core cultivator is as rare as a phoenix feather, let alone a Nascent Soul cultivator who only exists in legends.

"Having already attained godhood, how could he have fallen?"

Li Zhiyao's spirit remained silent for a long time.

Zhou Ran thought she was about to fall into a deep sleep again.

"Opportunity can often be a death warrant."

She finally spoke, her voice filled with a desolation that seemed to transcend two thousand years.

"My brother broke through by borrowing power, and thus became tainted by the causal obsessions of that desolate plane."

Ultimately, he not only failed to ascend, but also died in a...

Even divination cannot predict this corner.

She spoke the last sentence very slowly.

A corner that even divination cannot predict...

Isn't that the virtual world?

The Qilin pattern on Zhou Ran's left arm shone faintly beneath his clothes.

"Since it overlaps with the Underworld, why didn't any powerful beings from the Underworld intervene back then?"

Li Zhiyao shook her head.

"It's been too long, and I can't remember the specific details."

All I know is that back then, in order to protect themselves from being swallowed up by the Void Realm, some of the underworld gods among the Ten Kings of Hell chose to compromise.

Her voice trailed off.

"They even sold out a portion of humanity's fortune, reaching some kind of shady cooperation with those monsters."

compromise.

Cooperation.

Everything makes sense now.

The root of the problem actually started from that time.

Zhou Ran let out a cold laugh in his mind.

"Zhou Ran".

Li Zhiyao abruptly changed the subject, her tone suddenly turning somber.

"That woman named Aning."

Have you thought about who her employer is?

Zhou Ran didn't reply.

His gaze pierced through the barrier of his consciousness and landed on Aning, who was drinking water in large gulps.

Li Zhiyao continued:

"With the spiritual energy of Earth depleted, no matter how advanced mortal technology becomes, it is impossible for them to know so much about the interdimensional war that took place thousands of years ago."

The things his employer said were kept secret even within the underworld.

She paused.

"The core of the formation is the Primordial Bone of the Great Wilderness."

Location of the dimensional portal.

The properties of the suppressor key.

All of this core information is crystal clear.

"The only forces capable of producing something like this are either the rebels of the underworld themselves."

Either they're a level above the rebels.